Ethnography and Participant Observation PAUL ATKINSON MARTYN HAMMERSLEY ETHNOGRAPHIC methods, relying substantially or partly on “participant observation,” have a long if somewhat checkered career in the social sciences. They have been employed, in various guises, by scholars identified with a variety of disciplines. In this chapter we shall not attempt a comprehensive review of the historical and con- temporary methodological literature. Rather, we shall focus on several complementary themes that relate to some of the sources and dimensions of diversity and difference in ethnographic research, the recurrent tensions within the broad ethno- graphic tradition, and contemporary responses to these. Definition of the term ethnography has been subject to controversy. For some it refers to a philosophical paradigm to which one makes a total commitment, for others it designates a method that one uses as and when appropriate. And, of course, there are positions between these extremes. In practical terms, ethnography usually refers to forms of social research having a substantial num- ber of the following features: © astrong emphasis on exploring the nature of particular social phenomena, rather than set- ting out to test hypotheses about them ‘* a tendency to work primarily with “unstruc- tured” data, that is, data that have not been 248 coded at the point of data collection in terms of a closed set of analytic categories investigation of a small number of cases, perhaps just one case, in detail analysis of data that involves explicit interpre- tation of the meanings and functions of human actions, the product of which mainly takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations, with quantification and statistical analysis playing a subordinate role at most The definition of participant observation has been less controversial, but its meaning is no easier to pin down. A distinction is sometimes drawn between participant and nonparticipant ob- servation, the former referring to observation car- ried out when the researcher is playing an estab- lished participant role in the scene studied. However, although it is important to recognize the variation to be found in the roles adopted by observers, this simple dichotomy is not very useful, not least because it seems to imply that the nonparticipant observer plays no recognized role at all. This can be the case, but it need not be. More subtle is the widely used fourfold typology: complete observer, observer as participant, participant as observer, and complete participant (Gold, 1958; Junker, 1960). Even this tends to run together several dimensions of variation, such as the following:Ethnography and Participant Observation whether the researcher is known to be a re- searcher by all those being studied, or only by some, or by none how much, and what, is known about the research by whom what sorts of activities are and are not en- gaged in by the researcher in the field, and how this locates her or him in relation to the various conceptions of category and group membership used by participants what the orientation of the researcher is; how completely he or she consciously adopts the orientation of insider or outsider! . Moreover, it has been argued that in a sense all social research is a form of participant observation, because we cannot study the social world without being part of it (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983). From this point of view participant observation is not a particular research technique but a mode of being-in-the-world characteristic of researchers. Both ethnography and participant observation have been claimed to represent a uniquely human- istic, interpretive approach, as opposed to suppos- edly “scientific” and “positivist” positions. At the same time, within the ethnographic tradition there are authors espousing a “scientific” stance, as opposed to those who explicitly reject this in favor of an engaged advocacy and a critical stance. The philosophical, ethical, and methodological strands intertwine. They meet and coalesce to form par- ticular “schools” or subtypes of ethnography; they engage with different theoretical movements and fashions (structural functionalism, symbolic in- teractionism, cultural and cognitive anthropol- ogy, feminism, Marxism, ethnomethodology, criti- cal theory, cultural studies, postmodernism, and so on). There is never an orthodoxy. Rather, there isa constant process of oppositions, of successive heterodoxies and heresies. Just as the ethnogra- pher in the field often cultivates the position of the “marginal native” (Freilich, 1970), so ethnog- raphers collectively seek to distance thémselves repeatedly from versions of “mainstream” ortho- doxy. These are enshrined in the creation myths of ethnography itself. They are carried through into contemporary debates and differences over methodology. The particular focus for methodo- logical or epistemological controversy changes, of course. Earlier debates concerned the problems of data collection, inference, and topic. In the Jater sections of this chapter we examine more recent controversies, including those concerning the textual character of ethnography and the prob- lems of representation and authority associated with that. The fashionable preoccupations of post- structuralism and postmodernism have both stimu- 249 lated interest in these new issues and provided a new slant on older themes. They have given a new critical edge to the recurrent methodological is- sues: the tensions between disinterested observa- tion and political advocacy, between the “scien- tific” and the “humane,” between the “objective” and the “aesthetic.” Ethnography has, perhaps, never been so popular within the social The subsequent history of ethnography, both in anthropology and sociology, reflects the continu- ing tension between attraction to and rejection of, the model of the natural sciences; yet with few abandoning one pole wholeheartedly for the other. Furthermore, in recent years ethnography has wit- nessed great diversification, with somewhat dif- ferent approaches being adopted in different ar- eas, guided by different concerns (from traditional sociocultural description, through applied work designed to inform policy makers, to a commit- ment to advocacy and furthering political eman- cipation). And these different goals are variously associated with different forms of ethnographic practice: traditional, long-term, in-depth investi- gation sometimes being abandoned for condensed fieldwork or primary reliance on unstructured interviews, or for consultancy work or participa- tion in political struggles. In the next section we shall look in more detail at the major debates to which the ambivalent history and diverse character of modern ethnography have led: the question of whether ethnography is or can be scientific; questions about the proper relationship between ethnographic research and social and po- litical practice; and, finally, arguments surrounding the textual strategies used by ethnographers to rep- resent the lives of others, and the methodological, aesthetic, ethical, and political issues raised by these. These various themes are, of course, fre- quently closely interrelated. Ethnography: Science or Not? As we noted in the previous section, the ques- tion of whether there can be a science of social life has preoccupied social scientists for more than a century, and it has been an especially important element in much methodological thi ing about ethnography. However, this question is not one that can usefully be answered simply in the affirmative or negative, There is a wider range of possible answers. There are three dimensions structuring this range of possibilities: © There can be differences in views about which of the natural sciences is to be taken as para- digmatic for scientific method. ‘* There can be various interpretations even of any method held to be characteristic of par- ticular sciences at particular times. © There can be disagreements about what as- pects of natural scientific method should and should not be applied to social research. Much thinking about ethnographic methodology in recent years has been based on a rejection of “positivism,” broadly conceived as the view that social research should adopt scientific method, that this method is exemplified in the work of modern physicists, and that it consists of the rigorous testing ‘of hypotheses by means of data that take the form of quantitative measurements. Quantitative sociologi- cal research is often seen as exemplifying this posi- tivist viewpoint, and it has been criticized by eth- nographers for failing to capture the true nature of human social behavior. This arises because it relies on the study of artificial settings (in the case of experiments) and/or on what people say rather than what they do (in the case of survey research); be- cause it seeks to reduce meanings to what is “ob- servable”; and because it treats social phenomena as more clearly defined and static than they are, and as mechanical products of social and psychological factors. This is not to say that quantitative methods are rejected in toto by ethnographers; indeed, struc- tured forms of data collection and quantitative data analysis are frequently employed to some degree or other in ethnographic work. What is rejected is the idea that these methods are the only legitimate, or even the most important, ones. This implies a rejec- tion not so much of quantitative method or even of natural science as a model, but rather of positivism.* However, in recent years a more radical atti- tude has appeared that does seem often to involve rejection of both quantitative method and the sci- entific model. Whereas at one time ethnographers questioned the frequently assumed relationship between science and quantification, this is now less common; often, the two are rejected together (see, e.g., Lincoln & Guba, 1985; J. K. Smith, 1989). In part, this reflects a general cultural disillusionment with natural science. It is nowly seen as the source of highly destructive ponry and of substantial planetary pollution, r example. Indeed, some regard it as an oppres- sive force that dominates the modern world, Ele- ments of this view are to be found in the writings of critical theorists (see Held, 1981; Wellmer, 1969/1974) and the work of feminists, where sci- ence is sometimes associated with male aggression and patriarchy (see, for instance, Harding, 1986). Both of these approaches have become influential among ethnographers and have led many to move away from the model of science toward exploring alternatives that reopen links with the humanities (see, ¢.g., Eisner, 1985, 1988, 1991). In part, what is involved here is a questioning of the objectivity of social research, ethnographic research included. For instance, it is argued by feminists that the findings of much social re- search, including ethnographic work, reflect the masculinist assumptions of researchers. It is not just that they have tended to neglect and occasion- ally to disparage the activities and experiences of women, but that the whole perspective on the world that they provide is limited by their male point of view. This is not dissimilar in character to earlier Marxist criticisms of the ideological character of bourgeois social science, and analo- gous criticisms have long been found among ad- vocates of black sociology (for a discussion that draws these parallels, see Hammersley, 1992a). Increasingly, however, this challenge to the objectivity of ethnographic (and other) research has been developed into a more fundamental ques- tioning of the very possibility of social scientific knowledge. It is pointed out that the accounts produced by researchers are constructions, and as such they reflect the presuppositions and socio- historical circumstances of their production. This is held to contradict the aspiration of social sci- ence (including much ethnography) to produce knowledge that is universally valid, in other words, that captures the nature of the social world. In the past, ethnographers very often relied precisely on arguments about the greater capacity of their ap- proach to represent the nature of social reality accurately (see, e.g., Blumer, 1969). Such argu- ments are rarer these days, under the influence of various forms of antirealism, whether construc- tivism (Guba, 1990), philosophical hermeneutics U.K. Smith, 1989), or poststructuralism (Clough, 1992; Denzin, 1990; Lather, 1991). An interesting illustration of the last of these influences is to be found in commentaries by Denzin and Richardson on a recent dispute about the accuracy of Whyte’s (1955) classic ethno- graphic study of Boston’s North End. Whyte’s pioneering study was concerned with document- ing various aspects of the lives of people in this community, especially the “Comer Boys.” The ac- curacy of Whyte’s account is questioned by Boelen STRATEGIES OF INQUIRY (1992) on the basis of some recent interviews, though the original account is defended by a surviv- ing member of the Corner Boys (Orlandella, 1992). Moving off ata tangent, Denzin (1992) and Richard- son (1992) effectively dismiss this dispute on the ‘grounds that all accounts are constructions and that the whole issue of which account more accurately represents reality is meaningless. Also associated with this radical critique has been a tendency to direct some of the criticisms that have long been applied to quantitative re- search at traditional ethnography itself. It too is now seen by some as reifying social phenomena, as claiming illegitimate expertise over the people studied, as being based on relationships of hierar- chy, control, and so on. Indeed, it has been argued that it represents a subtler form of control than quantitative research because it is able to get closer to the people studied, to discover the de- tails of their behavior and the innards of their experience (Finch, 1986; Stacey, 1988). ‘The epistemological challenge to the credentials of ethnography that is at the root of these criticisms is undoubtedly fruitful in many respects. Some of the argu used to promote ethnography against quantitative method and to justify its features are open to serious question. To take just one example, the whole notion of what counts as a theory in ethnography is ill defined, and the concept of “theo- retical description” that has guided much ethno- graphic research in sociology is of doubtful value (Hammersley, 1992b, chap. 1). At the same time, there is a tendency for this questioning to lead to skepticism and relativism. It is not always clear how thoroughgoing this relativism and skepticism is. Often it seems to be applied selectively, but without much indication of what principles might underlie the selectivity (Woolgar & Pawluch, 1985, refer to this in another context as “ontological gerrymander- ing”). Where the attempt is made to embrace skep- ticism and relativism wholeheartedly, on the other hand, the end point seems likely to be a debilitating nihilism, Whatis required, it seems to us, is acareful reassessment of the methodological and philosophi- cal arguments surrounding the concept of science and of the relationship of ethnography to this. Above all, we must not be misled into assuming that we are faced merely with a choice between dogma- tism and relativism, between a single oppressive conception of science and some uniquely liberating alternative. Theory and Practice Another area of disagreement and debate that has become of great salience in recent years is the question of the relationship between ethnographicgraphy and Participant Observation research and social and political practice. In the past, and probably still today, most ethnography has been directed toward contributing to discipli- nary knowledge rather than toward solving prac- tical problems. Although such work may ultimately contribute knowledge of wide public relevance, this contribution has not usually been very imme- diate or specific. Furthermore, the knowledge pro- duced has often been presented as valuable for its, own sake as much as for any instrumental value it has. Although ethnographers have usually wished to address those beyond the boundaries of their disciplinary communities, very often this has not involved any marked deviation from the sort of research, or even the sort of written presentation, appropriate to academic work. The relationship between research and practice assumed here is what has been called the enlightenment model (Bulmer, 1982; Janowitz, 1971; for a more elabo- rate conception of the various possible roles of the researcher, see Silverman, 1985, 1989). How- ever, not all ethnographic research has operated on this model. For a long time, the applied anthro- pology movement in the United States has exem- plified a different stance, being specifically con- cerned with carrying out research that is designed to address and contribute directly to the solution of practical problems. This is a tradition that has flourished and transformed itself in recent years, coming to be applied within mainstream U.S. society, not just outside it (Eddy & Partridge, 1978; van Willigen, 1986). In addition, its practical and political orientation has spread more widely, with the disciplinary model coming under in- creasing criticism. Even those anthropologists and sociologists pri marily concerned with contributing to discipli- nary knowledge have sometimes felt it necessary to engage in advocacy on the part of the people they have studied. Furthermore, there have been calls for this to be developed further—indeed, to be integrated into the research process (Paine, 1985). Itis suggested that by its very nature anthro- pology (and the point can be extended without distortion to ethnographic work in general) in- volves a “representation” of others even when it does not explicitly claim to speak for or on behalf, of them. And it is argued that there are ethical and political responsibilities arising from this fact. However, neither this argument nor the sort of practice recommended on the basis of it is straight- forward. Drawing on their own experience, Has- trup and Elsass (1990) point out that the context in which any advocacy is to take place is a com- plex one: It is not composed simply of an op- pressed and an oppressor group but of a diversity of individuals and groups motivated by various ideals and interests, and pursuing various poli cal strategies. Furthermore, the group to be “rep- 253 resented” is not always internally homogeneous and is rarely democratically organized. Also, there is often genuine uncertainty about what is and is not in the interests of the group and of members of it. In particular, there is the danger of adopting ethnographic myths, such as that Indian groups represent “islands of culture” that must be de- fended against the apparently cultureless settlers, or that informants speak “cultural truths.” In recent years there has also been a growing application of ethnographic methods, by sociolo- gists, anthropologists, and others, in applied fields such as education, health, and social policy. This reflects, in part, a decline of confidence in quan- titative research on the part of funders and a willingness on the part of some of them to finance qualitative research. In Britain, ironically, this trend has been more obvious in the field of com- mercial market research than in government-funded work, though there are signs of change (Walker, 1985). This change is also evident in the United States, where, for example, federally funded evalu- ations in education have increasingly involved ethnographic components (see Fetterman, 1988; Fetterman & Pitman, 1986; Rist, 1981). At the same time, there has been some debate about whether, and in what senses, this applied research is ethnographic. Some anthropologists, in par- ticular, see it as abandoning key elements of what they regard as ethnography (Wolcott, 1980). And it is true that in several respects this trend has resulted in significant modification of ethnographic practice. An interesting example is the condensed fieldwork advocated and practiced by some re- searchers in the field of educational evaluation (see, ¢.g., Walker, 1978; for an assessment, see Atkinson & Delamont, 1985). Sometimes associated with the moves toward more applied forms of ethnographic work have been calls for collaborative research. In part, these have arisen out of concern about the lack of im- pact that ethnographic (and other) research has had on social and political practice. Some believe that its impact would be greater if practitioners were themselves involved in the research process, both because that involvement would be likely to change the research and make it more practically relevant and because they would be more moti- vated to draw on it as a result of being involved: There have been other important influences push- ing in the direction of collaborative research, ho ever, notably Marxist critical theory and femi- nism. These demand that research contribute to the political struggles of oppressed groups, not merely the working class, but also women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, and so on. And the com- mitment to collaboration stems from a reconcep- tualization of the central political goal of the Left as the extension of democracy, and the belief that those committed to that goal must exemplify their‘commitment to it in the practice of research. From * this point of view, traditional ethnographic work has been criticized for embodying a hierarchical and therefore undemocratic relationship between researcher and researched, because it is the for- mer who makes the decisions about what to study and how to study it, and whose voice is repre- sented in the written ethnography (see, for exam- ple, Gitlin, Siegel, & Boru, 1989). There is little doubt of the need for ethnogra- phers to rethink the relationship between their work and social and political practice. However, it would be a mistake in our view to seek to restructure ethnography on the basis of a single conception of that relationship. Above all, it is of considerable importance that we do not lose sight of what has hitherto been the goal of ethnographic research, namely, the production of knowledge. ‘We should not replace this with the pursuit of practical goals that, although sometimes valuable in themselves, are no more worthy in general terms of our time and effort than the pursuit of knowledge. This is especially so when these goals are of a kind that we may be much less able to achieve. It is true that conventional research never changes the world at a stroke, and that often it may not have much effect even over the long term. But that does not mean that it is of no value. It is also worth remembering that changing the world can be for the worse as well as for the better. Utopian attempts to do politics by means of research are of no serviee toanyone. / Rhetoric and Representation In recent years the literature on ethnography and participant observation has been enriched by a growing corpus of reflections on the rhetoric of ethnographic accounts, Attention has been given, for example, to the aesthetics and ethics of ethno- graphic texts, including the relationship between authority and authorship, and indeed to the con- nections among rhetoric, representation, and logic generally. This “rhetorical turn” among ethnogra- phers is part of a much broader movement of scholarship toward an interest in the rhetoric of inquiry that has been manifested in many of the human and social disciplines. It has engaged with various important (if often diffuse) theoretical and methodological tendencies—not least femi- nism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism, The most significant contributions, and the earliest, from social scientists came from cultural and so- cial anthropologists. More recently, attention has been paid to this issue by sociologists. Although the respective disciplines have slightly different emphases, the broad themes have been similar: STRATEGIES OF INQUIRY the conventionality of ethnographic texts, the rep- resentation of “Self” and “Other” in such texts, the character of ethnographies as a textual genre, the nature of ethnographic argumentation and the thetoric of evidence. ‘The starting point for this “rediscovery of rheto- tic” has been the acknowledgment that there is no perfectly transparent or neutral way to represent the natural or social world. For example, however “impersonal” and formulaic the work of the natu- ral scientist, it stands in no “natural” relationship to the phenomena and events it describes. On the contrary, the textual products of natural science are highly conventional. Their apparent guarantee of authenticity and credibility is dependent on readers’ adopting shared strategies of reading and interpretation. In just the same way, the human sciences draw on common sets of conventional devices to con- struct and convey their characteristic portrayals of social scenes, actors, and cultural meanings. Thus White's (1973) extensive writing on the writing of historical texts has exerted an influence far beyond historiography. Likewise, McCloskey’s (1985) wry and erudite commentaries on the rheto- ric of economics have provided important bench- marks and exemplars. Among social and cultural anthropologists, the standard ethnography or mono- graph was—to a considerable extent—a taken- for-granted format. As Boon (1983) points out, however, the typical framework of anthropologi- cal monographs imposed a common pattern on, rather than revealing one in, the vast array of human societies they described. He argues that the “classic” form of the anthropological mono- graph was a direct, if implicit, embodiment of the domain assumptions of functionalist anthropol- ogy. The watershed of critical awareness of ethno- graphic textuality was the highly influential col- lection of papers edited by Clifford and Marcus (1986), Writing Culture. The works brought to- gether in that collection all emphasize, in various ways, the nature of the textual imposition that anthropology exerts over its subject matter. They emphasize the complex interplay of literary and thetorical, historical, and ideological influences on the production and reception of anthropologi- cal ethnographies. Clifford and Marcus's volume is partly, but not perfectly, parallel to that of Geertz (1973), who began to assert that anthropological writings could be regarded as “fiction,” in the sense that they are made: They are crafted by their authors and by “literary” conventions and devices. Geertz (1988) went on later to document the distinctive literary styles used by a number of founding figures, British and American. In the same way, several contributors to the Clifford and Marcus volume sought to illuminate the “literary” antecedentsgrapny una raructpant Ubservation parallels for ethnographic writing. Pratt (1986, 1991), for instance, developed there—and else- where—the parallels and self-conscious contrasts between anthropological ethnography and travel writing. In a similar vein, an early contribution from Atkinson (1982) explored some of the literary origins and parallels for sociological ethnography associated with the Chicago school. In common with many of the anthropological commentaries appearing at that time, Atkinson's work was i fluenced by aspects of contemporary literary criti- cism. Structuralist and poststructuralist theory em- phasized that the “realism” of realist fictional writing drew on particular conventions of reading and writing, In the same way, it was possible to explore how the authenticity of “factual” accounts, such as ethnographies, was generated through equally (and very similar) conventional means. ‘Some aspects of the “literary” antecedents and convergences have been sketched in the literature. For anthropology, commentators have drawn atten- tion to literary as well as biographical affinities between the work of Malinowski and Conrad (Clif- ford, 1988), between surrealism and French eth- nography (Clifford, 1988), and in the poetic writ- ing of Benedict and Sapir (Brady, 1991; Prattis, 1985). To a rather lesser extent, sociological tra- ditions have been explored from a similarly liter- ary perspective. Atkinson (1982) makes a pre- liminary identification of Chicago school urban ethnographies with the naturalistic and realistic novels of American literature, But if the respec- tive intellectual communities wish to pursue these schemes, there is much yet to do. We still have rather few detailed examinations of the general cultural and—in the widest sense—“literary” con- texts within which particular ethnographic tradi- tions have been formed. In Britain, for example, the sociological foundations laid by urban inves- tigators such as Booth and Rowntree have major affinities with several literary models. The inves- tigative journalism of more popular writers, and the fictional products of authors such as Dickens, provide rich mixtures of realism, melodrama, and the grotesque that find their parallels in the tone, style, and sensibilities of the sociological tradition. Likewise, the long and rich tradition of “commu- nity” studies on both sides of the Atlantic needs careful reading against the kind of literary analy- ses of the contrast between the urban and the rural furnished by, say, Raymond Williams (1973). The point of such “literary” analysis is not merely to create “interesting” parallels and con- trasts, nor yet to attempt to trace the literary antecedents of particular anthropological or so- ciological texts. It is, rather, to remove the false distinction between “science” and “rhetoric.” The essential dialectic between the aesthetic and hu- manist, on the one hand, and the logical and 255 scientific, on the other, is thus reaffirmed. A rec- ognition of the conventional quality and literary antecedents of the ethnographic text in turn raises questions about the distinctive characteristics of ethnography as a genre of textual product. It is not enough, in the eyes of many contemporary com- mentators, simply to note that our texts are (in Geertz’s sense) fiction. It is important to map the conventions that are deployed in constructing par- ticular anthropological and sociological styles. It is thus possible to explore relationships among schools of thought, traditions, and individual author- ship with repertoires of textual device through which scholarly accounts are constructed. This identification of style and genre has taken various turns. A group of British anthropologists (Fardon, 1990) has explored how different textual styles have accorded with different regional bi- ases and preoccupations. (They in turn criticize several of the “textual” critics for treating anthro- pological ethnography as a more or less undiffer- entiated textual type.) Likewise, Van Maanen’s (1988) highly influential contribution explores the characteristics of various modes of ethno- graphic writing. Most notably, perhaps, he con- trasts the styles of “realist” and “confessional” accounts by sociologists and anthropologists, the former style typically being central, the latter traditionally being more marginal, perhaps rele- gated to a methodological appendix. This contrast, which is built into a great deal of ethnographic output, is itself a textually based convention whereby the tension between the “personal” and the ‘“‘im- personal” has been managed by successive authors and schools of ethnography. In the “classic” ethnographies of urban sociol- ogy and anthropology, the conventions of textual production were not always apparent. The reason is simple: Their authors and readers drew on tex- tual paradigms and devices that were entirely familiar and “natural.” Thus the highly “read- able” ethnographies, such as Whyte’s Street Cor- ner Society (1955), conveyed vivid accounts of social settings by virtue of their “literary” quali- ties. As Gusfield (1990), among others, has pointed out in an analysis of Liebow’s Tally’s Corner (1967), such a sealist ethnography achieves its effects through its narrative structures and its thetorical and stylistic devices. Similarly, draw- ing explicitly on models from literary criticism, as well as on the work of previous commentators (¢.g., Brown, 1977; Edmondson, 1984), Atkinson (1990) identifies the recurrent textual methods and motifs by which ethnographic texts have been constructed. He looks at several standard ele- ments of literary analysis, and thus examines the use of various major devices and tropes. For ex- ample, narrative forms are used to convey accounts of social action and causation. Likewise, the “char- acters” or actors in the account are assembled outA of narrative and descriptive fragments, Hence eth- nographers use their “literary” competence to re- construct social action and social actors. In com- mon with many other critics and commentators, Atkinson traces the use of various figures of speech—tropes—such as metaphor, irony, and synecdoche. The demonstration that the “ethnog- raphy” is based on conventional literary resources does not, of course, invalidate their use. It com- mends a disciplined use of them: The use of ethnographic realism can never be innocent in the future. But there is no reason on that score alone to search out alternative literary forms, although some critics and commentators have advocated and practiced ethnographic writing that departs from the conventional realist text in various ways (for examples, see Crapanzano, 1980; Dwyer, 1982; Krieger, 1983; Shostak, 1981; Woolgar, 1988). In the hands of many, the textual or rhetorical turn serves not just aesthetic or methodological interests, but has inescapably ethical and political implications. A good deal of anthropological re- flection has focused on the textual representation of the Author and of the Other in the ethnography. Here, of course, anthropologists find common interest with more general cultural critics, such as Said’s (1978) account of Orientalism, or Spivak (1989) (see Pratt, 1992, for an exemplar that brings the interests together). It is argued that a paradox lies at the heart of the ethnographic endeavor and of “the ethnography” as a textual product. On the one hand is the ethnographer’ epistemological, personal, and moral commitment to his or her hosts. The image—often, the reality—of prolonged immersion in/“the field” and the emphasis on participant ofeervation commit the ethnographer toa shared sbcial world. He or she has become a “stranger” or “marginal native” in order to em- bark upon a process of cultural learning that is predicated on a degree of “surrender” to “the Other” (see Wolff, 1964). The epistemology of participant observation rests on the principle of interaction and the “reciprocity of perspectives” between social actors. The rhetoric is thus egali- tarian: observer and observed as inhabitants of a shared social and cultural field, their respective cultures different but equal, and capable of mu- tual recognition by virtue of a shared humanity. The classic texts of ethnography, on the other hand, have (it is claimed) all too often inscribed a radical distinction between the Author and the Other. The “realist” techniques of standard ethno- graphic reportage may implicitly endow the ethnog- rapher—as the implied Narrator—with a privileged gaze that reproduces the authorial omniscience characteristic of many examples of narrative fic- tion. The text brings actors and culture together under the auspices of a single, all-encompassing point of view. By contrast, the Other is rendered STRATEGIES OF INQUIRY solely as the object of the ethnographer’s gaze. The voice of the ethnographer is privileged, that of the Other is muted. As a consequence, there have been various moves to produce ethnographic texts that replace the “monologic” mode with more “dialogic” forms, in which the text allows for a multiplicity of “voices.” This perspective brings together a textual, methodological, and moral commitment. Dwyer's (1982) self-conscious adoption of a dialogic textual format is a bench- mark contribution to this style of presentation, although it falls short of a full-fledged dialogic approach. The moral concerns of commentators on ethno- graphic rhetoric have been echoed by advocates of feminist points of view (see Stanley & Wise, 1983). The textual practices of a privileged “West- em” observer may be compared to the inscription of a privileged masculine discourse. There have, therefore, been attempts to produce feminist texts that subvert the taken-for-granted formats. Kri- eger’s (1983) “stream-of-consciousness” style is offered as an exemplar (see Devault, 1990). The feminist appraisal of ethnographic writing is in tum part of a more general appraisal of social scientific writing and an interest in various gen- res—most notably biography and autobiography (see Stanley, 1990, 1992; see also D. Smith, 1987, pp. 105ff.). Stanley and Wise, Smith, and others provide an interesting link between a feminist standpoint and a readiness to treat textual forms as problematic. The concern is epistemological and ethical, personal and professional. From the feminist standpoint, of course, they are all impli- cative of one another. The rhetorical turn is also intimately related to a “postmodern” tendency in the construction of ethnography. The postmodern ethnography ex- plores the discontinuities, paradoxes, and incon- sistencies of culture and action. In contrast with the supposed “modern” ethnography, it does so not in order to resolve or to reconcile those dif- ferences. The classic modem ethnography (the postmodernist holds) brought the various frag- mentary representations of social life under the auspices of a dominant narrative and a single, privileged point of view. The postmodern author seeks to dissolve that disjuncture between the observer and the observed. The trope of “parti pant observation,” which captures the ambiva- lence of distance and familiarity, is replaced by one of “dialogue,” showing “the cooperative and collaborative nature of the ethnographic situation” (Tyler, 1986, p. 126). Moreover, the postmodern ethnography is held to adopt a radically alternative attitude toward its textual character. Tyler (1986), for instance, re- jects any claim that the ethnography can be said to “represent” the social world. He prefers the terminology and imagery of “evoking” (thoughgraphy and Participant Observation hhe omits consideration of just what is being evoked). A sophisticated discussion of evocation and eth- nographic “complexity” is also provided by Strath- em (1991). The subject matter of postmodernity and postmodern ethnographic texts are dialecti- cally related. This is aptly illustrated in Dorst’s (1989) account of an American town, Chadd’s Ford. There Dorst describes how this Pennsylva- nia suburb creates itself through various forms of representation and acts of identification (not least identification with and through the paintings of Andrew Wyeth). Dorst collates various local de- vices whereby surface appearances of the locality itself are contrived. Rose (1989) has written an even more extreme version of such a postmodern text. Again, it de- pends on the collation and juxtaposition of strik- ingly different collections of materials. It incor- porates not just radical shifts of subject matter and perspective but also strikingly different styles of writing. (As has been pointed out, Bateson’s eth- nography Naven, 1936, was an early example of a textually variegated ethnographic account; see Clifford, 1988, p. 146.) Although the “realist” ethnography clearly remains alive and well, it is also clear that—for better or worse—the post- modern turn will encourage some sociologists and anthropologists to experiment with textual styles and formats. In doing so, they will help to focus attention on the conventional character of all ethnographic reportage. It will become part of the craft knowledge of ethnographic authors that textual forms and styles will be self-consciously recognized and explored (see Atkinson, 1990). In this way, a variety of textual styles may become characteristic of the genres of ethnography. In recent years there has been such a consistent emphasis on the rhetoric or “poetics” of ethnog- raphy that there has been some danger of undue attention to these literary and aesthetic issues. Problems of logic and inference have been ob- scured. Recognition that scholarly texts have con- ventional and literary aspects seems to have led some practitioners to undue extremes. As we have noted, textual experimentation—sometimes to the point of obscurantism—has now been undertaken, particularly in the name of “postmodernism.” This emphasis on textuality is, however, in danger of privileging the rhetorical over the “scientific” or rational.Hammersley (1991, 1993) suggests that we need to pay attention to strategies of reading and writing ethnography, but primarily in order to évaluate the quality of arguments and the use of evidence. Like most of the “textual” commen- tators, he acknowledges that much Of the socio- logical or anthropological argument proceeds im- plicitly. It is conveyed in the textual arrangement of narrative, descriptions, and tropes. But he ad- vocates explicit critical attention to those textual elements in order to evaluate the quality of the 257 atguments—however conveyed. He thus reaffirms the more “scientific” aspect of the overall evalu- ation of the ethnographic enterprise. Toward a Conclusion: Contemporary Crises and Rene ‘als Ethnographic approaches to social research have been adopted in numerous disciplines and applied fields: social and cultural anthropology, sociol- ogy, human geography, organization studies, edu- cational research, cultural studies. It is notewor- thy that in none of these disciplinary areas is there a single philosophical or theoretical orientation that can lay unique claim to a rationale for eth- nography and participant observation. Across the spectrum of the social sciences, the use and justi- fication of ethnography is marked by diversity rather than consensus. On that basis, it is arguable that it is futile to try to identify different types of “qualitative research.” Rather, one has to recog- nize different theoretical or epistemological posi- tions, each of which may endorse a version of ethnographic work. It is certainly a mistake to try to elevate “ethnography” (or some equivalent cate- gory) to the status of a quasi-paradigm in its own right. There are some common threads, of course, but it is noticeable that many recent or contempo- rary advocates define their activities in terms of what they are not—in opposition to less preferred perspectives—rather than in a positive way. Historically, for instance, there has been little in common between the methodological appeals of sociology and anthropology. And those ap- peals in turn are not very accurately grounded in the actual histories of the respective fields. Many sociologists have claimed an elective affinity (at least) between participant observation and sym- bolic interactionism (Williams, 1976). One can indeed find many points of contact between the interactionists’ view of the social actor, social action, and social order and the practical accom- Plishment of fieldwork. Both stress the extent to which meanings and understandings emerge through Processes and transactions of interaction. In that context, Chicago school sociology is often in- voked as the originating inspiration. It is, there- fore, ironic that Chicago sociology itself was not especially dominated by ethnographic fieldwork; that early Chicago school urban ethnography was not necessarily very similar to more recent ap- proaches; that earlier Chicago urban sociology was not exclusively predicated on “symbolic in- teractionism”—which was largely a subsequent codification of presuppositions. Likewise, others identify an ethnomethodologi- cally informed ethnography. Here the stress is onP* the investigation of everyday methods for the practical accomplishment of social life. It often involves something of a relaxation of a “pure” version of ethnomethodology. The latter is drawn ‘on, often eclectically and in combination with other perspectives, to illuminate topics and prob- lems of interest to a more conventional, main- stteam sociology. Whether or not ethnomethodol- ‘ogy can be shown to live up to the claims of some of its practitioners that it is a uniquely fundamen- tal or “foundational” discipline, there is no doubt that it has furnished significant subject matter, and new research questions, for ethnographic orien- tations. It has, however, introduced some specific limitations. With their emphasis on the detailed analysis of spoken interaction, some versions of ethnomethodology have tended to encourage a rather restricted view of what constitutes “the field.” If too great reliance is placed on the analy- sis of spoken interaction, then the field of inves- tigation may become reduced to those settings and situations for which audio or video record- ings can be made. By the same token, the special contribution of participant observation is negated, or reduced to a very minor role in the acquisition of background knowledge of the social context (Atkinson, 1992). The same point may be made about the contribution of discourse analysis (see, for example, Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Close attention to the forms of language and social interaction are undoubtedly important adjuncts to more general, holistic ethnographic approaches. But they cannot fully substitute for ethnographic inquiry. In other quarters, an emphasis on semiotics or hermeneutics has informed ethnographic data col- lection and analysis. Here an attention to culture as a system of signs and texts provides the major impetus. In ethnography the textual metaphor of culture has found its major proponent in Geertz, whose formulation of “thick description” stresses the interpretation of cultural meaning. This inter- pretive perspective in cultural anthropology con- trasts clearly with more formal and—according to the interpretivists—reductionist views such as struc- turalism or ethnoscience. The interpretive approach implies a relativism that eschews a nomothetic approach, while warranting the capacity of the ethnographer to interpret cultures and their local manifestations. Interpretivism in this mode con- ceives of “culture” in terms of its own poetics— its metaphors, tropes, and other forms of repre- sentation. This sense of the “textuality” of social life has in turn been linked to a heightened aware- ness of the textual character of “the ethnography” itself, as we mentioned earlier. ‘There are common threads and recurrent motifs running through the entire ethnographic tradition. Yet there is no simple one-to-one relationship between ethnography and any given theoretical perspective. It is not the case that all ethnography has been undertaken under the auspices of one epistemological orthodoxy. Rather, the distinc- tive characteristics of ethnographic work have been differentially appealed to by different disci- plines and tendencies. As we have tried to show, this has produced a highly complex and conten- tious discursive field. Notes 1, There are researchers who have intentionally “gone native” for the purposes of research, for example, Jules- Rosette (1978). 2. We should not forget the nineteenth-century pre- cursors of this work, the writings of Engels (1845/ 1968), Booth (1889-1902), and Webb and Webb (1932), though they were more concerned with documenting living conditions than culture. 3. Its instability is exemplified in the disputes about how their work should be interpreted and what lessons should be drawn from it for sociology. See, for exam- ple, Bales (1966), McPhail and Rexroat (1979), Lewis and Smith (1980), Stewart (1981), Blumer (1983), and Fine and Kleinman (1986). 4, Blumer’s methodological writings exemplify this (see Blumer, 1969; for discussions, see Baugh, 1990; Hammersley, 1989). 5. Their appeal for some researchers undoubtedly rests on the appearance of greater precision and rigor, analysis being restricted to what can be validated on the basis of the availability of permanent recordings. And, indeed, some ethnomethodological writing has astrongly empiricist streak, see Atkinson (1988). 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